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I had a proper breakdown two Sunday nights ago. The Sunday night before returning to work after 11 months off on maternity leave. It involved full-on, inconsolable sobbing. I wasn’t upset so much about having to leave Nancy for four days every week, as I felt really ready for this. I really wanted a bit of balance to return to my life – a few days of doing ‘my stuff’ (work), with a special Friday for Nancy and me and then a lovely family weekend. Perfect! No, the issue I had was that it marked the end of our ‘special time’ together that had made me see the world in an entirely new way.

Literally as soon as they handed me my beautiful, newborn daughter the world was a different place. My eyes were opened to the incredibleness of nature, the warmth and generosity of people, the community that I didn’t know existed around me. All of it made the difficult first few months as a mother so much easier to deal with and made me feel incredibly positive about the world I’d just brought this little person into. Every day something would happen that would warm my heart and give me a renewed appreciation of, well, everything. So I think what I was worried about was that I would lose sight of all this as soon as I took on the stresses of work again, started rushing here, there and everywhere again, started dealing with difficult characters, a never-ending ‘to-do’ list and packed trains.

What I’ve realised since is that this experience can’t get taken away from me. Experiencing new motherhood is a life-changing thing, and I am after all, still a Mum. To keep sight of all these things could mean being a better human being, employee, partner, friend, daughter for ever.

Some of it I’m sure becomes engrained – especially those elements that you practise everyday just by being a Mum. But I’m sure that it could be easy to lose sight of others. Which is why I am writing this post – so that I can remind myself of everything I discovered on maternity leave and use it to remember to be patient, to look out for others, to make time for the important things and to not worry about the less important things.